Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Overrated

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

dug this up on my piles of DVDS during reorganizing(i.e. throwing things out for donation) and can't remember a thing (maybe it's just me ) on this one so I watched it again.This has kind of rough beginning. There is no setup beginning, just jumps right into 3 main leads in a bar .. and another guy giving them a small gold plate.Then the slow review happens. Who is with whom, has what background, is scheming behind who's back to do what... all to get some money which everyone is short of.And the story spirals to a frenzy outside a rural area, where protagonists, villains, third party and cops all show up for a stand-off/showdown. I was expecting a more well choreographed ending .. but it seems the producers went for something more symbolic then anything. It works but didn't release the tension for me.There was few, very few funny moments but those are really good.

If a movie can't hold your interest in the first 25 minutes, it's over as far as I'm concerned. This concept that you have to simply deal with a slow first third of a movie and be rewarded later is nonsense. A good movie has to start and end strong. It all seem interesting and some decent shots and lots of promise, but ultimately muddled and irrelevant. There are so many other movies from Asia to watch, many of which I am sure most of you have not seen, that I would really skip this one and look elsewhere. Why exactly does IMDb require a 10 line minimum for reviews? I said my piece and I hope this helps a few of you move on to the next film.

Fear not: the juicy premise of putting three masters of HK violent cinema in one movie delivers one of the most entertaining action movies of 2007.The film is a palpable thrill-ride, with an air of unmistakable cool and sheer brassiness of style. With scarcely time to slow-down, the silly and initially confusing but heavily entertaining and ultimately straightforward plot runs through a hundred twists and turns on its way to the seat-gripping finale that is the last third of the film.The three segments directed by Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam and Johnny To (apparently in that order, although it was not indicated in the film) are distinct in style and mannerism, but near-seamlessly integrated into a single experience. Not only did they use three directors, they also used multiple script-writers. Do not expect any section-markers here, though: it is not three stories, but one story told in three consecutively more elaborate segments which represent the vision and prowess of one director each - without, however, appearing needlessly patched-together or unfocused. So, to compare this to that other Asian 3-in-1 package, the excellent Three Extremes (with Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan and Park Chan-Wook), is to miss the point. Here we are dealing with a unitary experience, one not divisible by three.Fans of each director will find much to comment on the stylistic differences between each section. Best known perhaps for his kung-fu productions (at least in the West), the multi-talented Tsui Hark delivers a cool, crafty ambiance in his piece. Ringo Lam, a long-line police action-drama director, likewise carries the torch with a surprisingly mellow and tactful show-of-hands. It is really the last segment of the film, under the steady hand of the miracle-worker Johnny To - the brilliant director of gems such as Election I & II and Exiled - that really puts this work in the category of must-see cinema. It would be impossible to describe just what makes the last act so good without giving something away, but suffice to say the success lies in its mixture of suspense, action and black humour in a dazzling tour-de-force. And yet, To's section makes sense only in the context of the whole; it would not be possible to appreciate the finale without going through the first and second acts. The third act is the charm, but only because the first two acts lead to it and suggest it with force and clarity. By its combination of three geniuses, the impeccable thrill of the film gets multiplied by three, making the end result something greater than the sum of its parts.The actors are adequate and the chemistry between them works well. This is not an especially 'deep' thinking-man's movie by any stretch - character-development especially is among the real weaknesses of this movie - but for what it's worth, the characters deliver their lines and express their emotional range quite convincingly (with a few notable exceptions). The fraternal chemistry between the main characters saves much of the hapless script. But really, this film is about action, violence, crime, morality and love - the stuff of entertainment. Maybe not serious or tight enough for some, the over-the-top story proves highly entertaining as a backdrop for the stylish visual work emanating from the three great directors.I'm willing to forgive this movie its obvious shortcomings: its unexplained plot-ends and side-tracks, its focus on action and shine over drama and substance, its use of three writers in the seemingly impossible task of writing a single storyline. Bottomline: It works! Sometimes heckling about details seems petty when what is iffy in ideation is saved in execution. Minor script is turned into a major movie.Absolute entertainment, with a touch - or two, or three - of genius.

My clockmaker friend was not pleased. His rating system is such: If you look at your watch once, its a good movie. Twice is pushing your luck and three times and you're out of luck. ( No clock being the perfect movie ). He took 3 looks. Though having some decent scenes you sort of get a mixed bag of plotting, double-crossing and old style Tsui Hark slapstick. Still we found it worth talking about afterward a bit, so maybe its worth a look... Side plots aren't concluded and motivations aren't all too clear, the segmentation isn't really clear, you don't really see the 3 parts differentiate from each other. Still, could have fared worse since for a change the action was not the consuming theme, instead the few fights being portrayed in what i'd imagine to be a realistic fashion, won't tell more.. Some good comedy , good milieu, gotta be fair it had some OK content to it too.